Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Navy Seal authored account of Bin Laden killing to be released

A detailed first-person account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, written under a pseudonym by a member of the Navy SEALs who participated in the mission and was present at bin Laden’s death, will be released next month, the publisher said on Wednesday.

The book, “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden,” which is scheduled to be released on Sept. 11, has been a tightly held secret at the publisher, Penguin. It promises to be one of the biggest books of the year, with the potential to affect the presidential campaign in the final weeks before the election.

The author’s name will be listed as Mark Owen by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin. For security reasons, he used a pseudonym and changed the names of other SEAL members.

A former member of SEAL Team 6, the author was a team leader in the operation that resulted in the death of Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011. According to a description of the book provided by the publisher, the author gives a “blow-by blow narrative of the assault, beginning with the helicopter crash that could have ended Owen’s life straight through to the radio call confirming Bin Laden’s death,” and is “an essential piece of modern history.”

Penguin officials would not say to what extent the book was vetted by government agencies. Colonel Tim Nye, the chief spokesman for the military’s Special Operations Command, said he would reserve comment until he had an opportunity to read the book.

Fascinating. It's a book I'll be reading. It'll be interesting to see how this could influence the election.

As interesting perhaps as how what follows could influence the election (over 3 million views to date):

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Rick, not saying you should or shouldn’t buy/read the book, but thought you should know that this isn’t sitting well with some folks in the SEAL community.

“One thing that is certain, this former DEVGRU operator has been ostracized by the men of DEVGRU for good.”

http://sofrep.com/10631/no-easy-day-author-seal-team-6/

“Its not a secret (the UBL raid) and their mission (is being ) exploited by politics – to be expected, but for one of our own to cash in is simply unprofessional and disrespectful to those that didn’t cash in.” -DEVGRU operator

I had wondered about that tim... it seems that based on some of the information being leaked, it wouldn't take much to figure out who the anonymous Seal is... and I'd definitely wondered how the others involved would be reacting...